


Through The Years

by orphan_account



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Original Character(s), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale are pureblood wizards who go to school at Hogwarts.Crowley falls in with the wrong crowd and gets into Herbology. Aziraphale befriends House Elves and sucks at Charms. This is their relationship over the years (feat. Crowley's teen angst!)





	Through The Years

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed, so my apologies for any errors (particularly tenses)! This is an idea that's been rolling around in my head for a few days and it all fell out of my fingers onto the keys today, so I hope it isn't awful. Please let me know if you enjoy! ^.^

The atmosphere on Platform Nine and Three Quarters was tangible. It was a bubbling potion of gold-sparkling excitement, dragon-egg green nerves, the deep-pink of renewed friendships and that subtle, but pervasive, rising odour of hot BO that accompanied hordes of teenagers whenever they gathered in any number greater than three.

This was it: the start of the rest of Crowley’s life. Hogwarts would decide his future. The friends he made at school, the subjects he dedicated himself to, his achievements – they would all irreversibly impact What Came Next. His father had impressed this upon him with furrowed brows and the stern admonishment Not To Mess It Up. 

Crowley had no plans to the contrary.

He stood on the platform amongst the rising tide of the crowd next to his nanny. He didn’t know her name; he had never particularly concerned himself with trivial things like that. Nannies came and went from the Crowley household, and all that mattered was that this one had successfully delivered both him and his trunk in time for the Hogwarts Express and hadn’t tried to make small talk after the portkey had arrived.

He dismissed her now as steam began to rise from the funnel of the train in front of them. “I’m very grateful,” he drawled, stuffing his hands in his pockets with an affected air, “but I’m sure you’re keen to get back.”

“Well I –“ His nanny, whose name was Anathema and who wasn’t quite sure that this was how it worked, goggled at him from behind her round, wire-rimmed glasses. They were of the style that had achieved a comeback in the nineties when there had been all that fuss with Harry Potter. 

“Here,” Crowley reached into his robes and pulled out a galleon. “For your trouble.” With the sort of precociousness only a filthy rich eleven-year-old could pull off, he dropped the gold coin into her hand, which to both Anathema and her hand’s surprise had opened to receive it. “Now, run along, back to Father. Let him know I arrived safely. Thanks for your help, and all that whatnot.” He bared his teeth in a grin.

He had never been that good with people. Normal human etiquette often escaped him.

Anathema scurried off, again without quite knowing why. There had been a lot of that, nannying for Crowley.

Now, finally, he was alone: a paper-thin figure, tall for his age, with a shock of sleek, short red hair in black robes that had been tailored impeccably for him. He stood in a sea of parents and children hugging each other in emotional goodbyes. His lips curled, part from distaste, but mostly because emotional parents were not something he was familiar was, and things he was not familiar with made him uncomfortable. 

His parents, of course, had been too busy to see him off. It serves being said that this was not something Crowley was particularly bothered by; in fact, it was par for the course. His parents had been too busy for rather most of his life. Father was the type of government official so high up in the Ministry of Magic that not even the Minister of Magic herself had the clearance to know the details of his role. Mother - well. Perhaps that was best left unsaid.

One of the downsides of enjoying his own company, and with parents who eschewed any of the normal routines of a social life was that despite coming from an esteemed pureblood family, unlike many of his peers Crowley had had few opportunities to make social connections. Now, despite the huge pressure on him to make those sorts of friends that would be Beneficial To His Future, standing on Platform Nine and Three Quarters amidst a mass of people who all seemed to know one another, he felt quite at a loss.

He reached into another of his robe’s pockets and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. The dark circles of their lenses obscured his unblinking, yellow snake-eyes as he slipped them on. 

“You’ll be good, won’t you Aziraphale? You’ll be Mummy’s little angel?” A couple of yards across the platform from him - the space between them miraculously crowd-free - a portly witch with a halo of short white curls was tugging down on the lapels of her son’s waistcoat. The boy, slightly plump and with white blond curls that mirrored his mother’s own, had not yet changed into school uniform and seemed joyfully unbothered by the maternal fussing of his progenitor.

“Of course, Mother. You can count on me!” The boy uttered the words with beatific smile and apparently no suggestion of sarcasm whatsoever, bouncing on his heels. Behind his sunglasses, Crowley’s eyebrows rose.

The witch beamed at her son. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, somehow, although Crowley couldn’t quite put his finger on what. “Now, I’ll send you a care package every weekend, and make sure you eat three full meals a day!” She waggled her finger at him. “The meals they put out at Hogwarts are wonderful! I don’t want my little angel wasting away!”

“Yes, Mother!”

Privately, Crowley doubted very much that the boy was in danger of that happening any time soon, but he had to admit that that there was something somewhat appealing about his softness. He looked comfortable, nothing like Crowley’s own sharp angles, as if he would be particularly enjoyable to hug especially if he was in some sort of knitted jumper. 

The Hogwarts Express belted out two sharp toots. Crowley blinked the thought away. Ludicrous. 

Students began to crowd onto the train in chattering groups of twos and threes. For one of the first times in his life he felt painfully conscious of the fact that he was alone. Briefly, he considered going up to the curly-haired boy and introducing himself. He too seemed friendless, even if only for the meantime, and at the least he appeared approachable. Crowley felt that he couldn’t do too badly to have someone like him as his friend.

Before he had the chance to act there was a tap on his shoulder. Crowley turned, and was assaulted by a pair of hands lifting his sunglasses off of the bridge of his nose. 

His pupils contracted painfully in the onslaught of bright light and he hissed, his hand whipping to his back pocket to reach for his wand. Eleven inches, tulip whitewood and dragon heartstring. Surprisingly flexible.

“Whoa, easy there.” The boy in front of him held up his hand, his other proffering Crowley’s glasses. He was about half a foot shorter than him, with greasy brown hair styled in an unflattering undercut and red eyes that Crowley was sure were contacts. His eyes didn’t match the easy smile he had pasted on his teen-acne aggrieved face. He was flanked by three other kids, two of whom Crowley vaguely recognised. “Anthracis Stroop. Second year. Anthrax, people call me.”

“Give me those,” Crowley snarled, grabbing the proffered sunglasses. 

“Sorry,” Anthrax said without seeming very sorry at all. “I saw your red hair and thought-“

“If you say ‘I thought you were a Weasley’, I’ll bite you,” Crowley hissed. It wasn’t that he was particularly prejudiced against the Weasley’s – not like some – but he had had enough of that to last him a lifetime. Millennia, in fact.

Anthrax smirked. It was the sort of smirk that looked as if it had been practised in the mirror, for many hours, alongside somewhat camp renditions of evil laughs and finger-steepling. “I was going to say that I thought you might be Anthony Crowley. I’d heard he was a redhead, and he’s meant to be starting Hogwarts this year.”

“So?” Crowley slid the sunglasses back on his face.

“Well, he’s always been a bit mysterious - his family aren’t really the sort to mix with the rest of us lot. With anyone, in fact.”

“Us lot?”

“Purebloods.”

“Ah.” He had a feeling that he knew where this was going. The part of him that had been worried about making friends – not that he had been _worried_ worried – relaxed a bit in relief.

“So you’re him? The eyes –“ Anthrax pointed at his own, “they say all the Crowleys have them. Like a snake. Speak parseltongue too, do you?” He didn’t wait for confirmation but looked around approvingly at the three behind him, as if he was a housewife and Crowley was a prize-winning cat with a particularly magnificent coat and posture that he had taken on show.

Crowley considered. “Yesss.”

Anthrax beamed. “This is Dagon, Hastur and Ligur.” He pointed to each goon in turn. Dagon shot him what Crowley imagined was her interpretation of a winning grin. The effect was ruined slightly by the lazy eye that pointed in the vicinity of his left shoulder. “All purebloods too.”

Crowley remembered the other two now. Hastur and Ligur were both the offspring of other Ministry officials. He must have seen them at one of the rare few bureaucratic functions he’d been required to attend as family over the years. Or, at that one infamous ‘Bring Your Child to Work Day’ the Ministry had hosted, back in ‘14. The day had been a PR disaster and never attempted again after the daughter of the Minister of the Department for the Regulation of Spontaneous Combustion had been sent home in a teapot, with eight more tentacles than humans were genetically coded to come with and a penchant for predicting Muggle football World Cups. 

What football was, Crowley didn’t know and didn’t care. 

For a set of potential lifelong friends the group in front of him did not make for a prepossessing sight, but he considered them anyway. The one called Hastur looked more than a little unhinged, with unsettling black, jelly-like eyes and a mop of dirty blond hair – and not dirty blond as in the dark blond colour, but actual of-the-earth dirty. Dagon… was Dagon, and Anthrax looked as if Skrillex and an especially devoted Twilight fan, red contacts and all, had spawned a teen monstrosity together. Ligur, his face framed by a set of glasses thick-lensed enough to stop bullets just looked mildly vacant. Charismatic, they were not.

Still, the sons of government officials – surely these were the right sort of people he should be making friends with? For his Future?  
The Hogwarts Express released a final, warning toot.

“Quick, we’d better get on,” Anthrax said. “Ligur, grab his trunk. Ligur!”

“It’s going to be a nightmare getting past the ‘Potter carriage’ with this,” Dagon groused. “It’ll be rammed with first years.” She helped the stoic Ligur with the trunk nonetheless.

“Shut up, and get on before it leaves without us!”

Doubtfully, as he was hustled into the carriage, Crowley shot one last look over his shoulder at the space where the plump, curly-haired boy had been standing. He had seemed so much more… pleasant… than this lot. 

The boy’s mother was still there, but the platform was emptied of teenagers. As the train began to pull away parents swarmed closer, waving, some with tears in their eyes as their children were hauled off for another school year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

Then again, Crowley thought as Anthrax pushed him into an already crowded compartment, and Dagon, Hastur and Ligur squashed in behind them, with no halo of white curls in sight: he was the one with yellow snake eyes.

Maybe, this was the group where he was meant to belong.

Maybe, “Mummy’s little angel” was off-limits for someone like him.


End file.
